Melvin Barnet, 83, Times Editor Fired After Charge of Communism

By MICHAEL T. KAUFMAN

Published: June 19, 1998

Melvin L. Barnet, who was among several editors and reporters questioned by a Congressional committee investigating Communist affiliations in the news business in the 1950's and who was dismissed by The New York Times after invoking the Fifth Amendment, died on Wednesday at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn. He was 83 and lived in Brooklyn Heights.

On July 13, 1955, Mr. Barnet responded to the questions of Senator James O. Eastland, chairman of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, by declaring: ''Since February or March of 1942, sir, I have not been a Communist. At the time prior to that I assert my privilege under the Fifth Amendment.''

The subcommittee had been looking into disclosures made by Winston Burdett, a CBS correspondent who said he had joined the Communist Party in the late 1930's while working at The Brooklyn Eagle. As the opening witness in the subcommittee hearings, Mr. Burdett named 12 former colleagues at The Eagle, including Mr. Barnet, as party members.

When, two weeks later, Mr. Barnet, a Harvard graduate and an Army veteran of World War II, was asked about these and other names, he repeated his refusal to comment, citing the constitutional protection against self-incrimination. In that period, characterized by fears of Soviet espionage and Communist-hunting by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, such responses were at times offered by witnesses who believed it dishonorable to name old colleagues and implicate them in their own troubles.

On the afternoon of his testimony, Mr. Barnet, who had been a copy editor on the city desk for two years, was notified of his dismissal by The Times in a letter made public by its publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger. The letter noted: ''The course of conduct which you have followed since your name was first mentioned in this connection culminating in your action today has caused The Times to lose confidence in you as a member of its news staff.''

Seven employees of the news department were called before the Eastland subcommittee; six provided accounts of their Communist backgrounds to the editors of The Times, and remained in their jobs. Though Mr. Barnet was the only one of the seven to invoke the Fifth Amendment, Turner Catledge, then the managing editor, wrote later that this was not the reason for his firing. He was dismissed, Mr. Catledge said, because he had failed to ''cooperate with us in protecting the integrity of The New York Times.''

In an editorial on Jan. 5, 1956, six months after Mr. Barnet's appearance before the subcommittee and dismissal, The Times declared: ''In the case of those employees who have testified to some Communist association in the past, or who have pleaded the Fifth Amendment for reasons of their own, it will be our policy to judge each case on its own merits, in the light of each individual's responsibilities in our organization and of the degree to which his relations with this newspaper entitle him to possess our confidence.''

After he was fired, Mr. Barnet had difficulty finding work. He picked oranges in Florida, served as cook on a shrimp boat and edited manuscripts for vanity presses before joining The Medical Tribune, a journal distributed to doctors, in the 1960's. He was associate editor when he retired in 1978.

He is survived by his wife, Joan; a son, Michael Cross-Barnet of Santa Monica, Calif.; a brother, Stuart, and a sister, Beverly Morrison, both of Los Angeles, and two grandchildren.